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Assange's Lawyers: Follow Swedish Law, Interrogate Him In the UK
concertina226 writes "Lawyers representing Julian Assange have demanded that he be questioned in London over rape and sexual molestation allegations. 'Prosecutor Marianne Ny must ... start treating him as everybody else who is under suspicion. Assuming that the prosecutor does not have a prejudiced opinion regarding the question of guilt, and is prepared to treat the different versions objectively, it is obvious that an interrogation with Julian Assange would benefit everybody, including the injured parties,' the lawyers wrote."
That's something I still don't understand. Why does he claim the Americans could arrange an extradition from Sweden more readily than from the UK?
My understanding was that there was no charge (or accusation) filed in Sweden. A compaint has been filed and he was wanted for interrogation over the filed complaint. Considering the deeper implications of travelling into Sweeden, I can understand his reluctance to do so, especially if he believes the complaint as no bases.
Under the circumstances, en interrogation in England is the best solution for every parties. If, following the interrogation, formal charges are layed and is is accused of rape, his situation will change anyway and probably won't have the choice to face the charges there, regardless where he is.
or, how about stop hiding like a baby
... said the anonymous coward.
Yes, but the reason he's there is that the UK seemed to be about to extradite him to Sweden. He was quite happy living in the UK so long as it didn't mean going to Sweden.
It's the fatal flaw in dear old Julian's argument: He's worried about the Americans getting hold of him, so he'd rather stay in the UK where extradition to the US is easy, rather than go to Sweden where extradition to the US is much harder. Or maybe there's another reason....
What that other reason is is hard to tell, exactly. It might be that he is genuinely guilty-as-not-yet-charged in Sweden. Or it could just as easily be that he has an enormous ego, a superiority complex and a highly-developed paranoia that makes him see persecution in everything, whether it looks plausible to a sane person or not.
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What deeper implications of travelling into Sweden, exactly? You mean escaping the UK's we'll-give-you-anyone-you-ask-for extradition treaty with the USA? I can see how that would be a problem for him, yes.
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Really?
http://www.riksdagen.se/sv/Dok...
http://translate.google.se/tra...
Most "everybody else" is not being hunted by the United States. Frankly, if they want to call this an exception to the rule then yes, make an exception for Julain Assange and get of your ass and question him in the UK. This is indeed a special case.
== Jez ==
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Assange's resistance to extradition to Sweden is I think because he believes he is more vulnerable to extradition lock away in a Swedish Jail, not because the extradition process is easier from there to the US than the UK, just that he won't be able to skip bail and the country locked away in a jail. EAW extradition proceedings from the UK to Sweden were in motion, he was out on bail when he skipped off into the Ecudorian embassy. If he had been charged in Sweden for rape, combined with the obvious flight risk someone like Assange represents, bail would have been very very high or not available. Assange's thinking is it would be at that point that the US would start extradition proceedings.
An interesting point here is it is implicit that Assange will not stand and fight any extradition proceedings if he can skip the country. It is a strategy that has left him imprisoned in an embassy in London. Also it has effectively accomplished what the authorities of many countries wanted to achieve, he is trapped, with a progressively smaller political voice.
Look at how long it took the UK courts to decide that he really should be extradited to Sweden. That too me shows that the UK system kind of works. When he gets over here to Sweden the question of extradition to the US would not be a court matter but a matter for the Foreign Minister and thus could happen in seconds. At least in the UK he has some protection against that.
Turns out that, as he's in the Ecuadorian embassy, he's already escaped the UK ...
Swedish police have visited other countries to 'interview' suspects in the past - including murderers - and presumably will do so in the future, so it does seem a little odd that they're so reluctant to pop over to the UK to interview a suspected 'rapist' who has offered to assist countless times.
The whole issuing of the European Arrest Warrant in the first place is decidedly odd too ... and brings into question the general use of such warrants.
Eclectic beats from Leeds, UK
handmadehands.co.uk
So you're saying his request to be treated like everybody else is actually a request to be treated different from everybody else?
As far as I'm concerned Knox is either guilty or she knows a lot more than she's saying ... ... HOWEVER , any legal system that can convict someone , then drop the conviction after an appeal and release them THEN reinstate the conviction after a couple of judges get together over a capucino and decide to bow to public opinion, frankly doesn't deserve much respect for its ability to carry out fair trials.
No
It isn't.
And why should Sweden be more likely to hand his as over to the US when the UK has much tighter bonds across the pond??
I call bullshit. /C
It would be easier for the US to get him extradited from the UK than from Sweden. Our extradition treaty with the US has far fewer safeguards than does Sweden's. And Sweden wouldn't be able extradite him to the US anyway without him going back to the UK first. I don't see why he can't go to Sweden to face questioning. He seems to have a case to answer, as well he would if the allegations against him were made in the UK (not that this matters legally for a European Arrest Warrant to be valid, but it makes a difference morally).
If he'd really thought that he wouldn't have run off to hide in an embassy - he'd have waited for any indictment then played it out in court THEN gone to an embassy if things looked bad.
You do know that the British courts have already decided to extradite him to Sweden, don't you? He didn't run off to the embassy until his appeal of the extradition failed.
There may very well be good reason for JA to not want being extradited to Sweden, but there may be other reasons than discussed previously here that explain why the Swedish authorities are acting the way they are.
One reason is that the prosecutor in charge of the case may have found herself a useful tool that she can use to further her own ambitions in something completely unrelated: she is known to be a feminist and has stated in at least one interview that it must be possible to punish men even after a court has found them to be innocent. She is also a member of the same political party as one of the (possible) victims. Which just happens to be the same political party to which the defense attorney belongs! My conclusion is that the suspicion of internal politics cannot be put to rest until more evidence appears.
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Just to point out a few strange facts in this sordid case:
- JA found out he was wanted for questioning not by being told be the authorities, but by being told be the media. I cannot remember another case where this has happened.
- the prosecutors office called a press conference to announce JA was wanted for questioning. I have never heard of them doing anything similar in any other case.
- the two (possible) victims of rape have the same lawyer. Also this is a first: it does not matter how many victims are involved in a court case, they get their own lawyer and do not share this lawyer with anybody else involved in the same case.
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Full disclosure: I live in Sweden and it is my personal opinion that the prosecutor handling this case at the moment is doing so for personal reasons and should be removed from her position.
Well he's not requesting to be treated like everybody else; he's requesting to be interrogated on Ecuadorian soil, which seems reasonable in this case. Why would a Swedish justice system prioritize a technicality over actually trying to move a rape case forward if they really gave a damn about the supposed rape victims?
== Jez ==
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No, he's in the Ecuadorian embassy, which is on British soil. Britain does not regard foreign embassies as foreign soil (neither do most countries). The Geneva Convention prohibits forced entry into embassies and grants diplomatic immunity to anyone within them. This means that people in an embassy are still covered by the laws of the host country, but the only redress that the host nation has is to deport them as soon as they leave the embassy.
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He'll stand in a British court.
To answer the charge of skipping bail, contempt of court, etc. Then he can - LIKE HE ALWAYS COULD HAVE - argue that he should be legitimately put on trial in a "friendly" country. And he'll go through the legal system, same as anyone else. And then the legal system will decide if the law allows him to or not (I imagine it would be hard to argue UK jurisdiction over Swedish charges performed by an Australian, but it's not infeasible if enough prejudice could be proven).
Problem is, you didn't want to argue that several years ago. And you skipped bail, so we have no reason to believe it's not a delaying / avoidance tactic. So now you'll stand in a British court, probably be imprisoned by us for skipping bail for so long and so deliberately, and then WILL NOT ESCAPE our custody if they are required to hand you over to the Swedish anyway. Which they probably are, given the way EU law works.
Fact is, I'd have had much more respect if he'd done his play to cameras, and then just followed through the legal system properly. We would have all kept an eye on it to make sure suspicious things didn't happen, and at no point would you have broken the law.
But he didn't. He went through the courts and when he didn't get the answer he wanted, he skipped bail deliberately. So go rot in jail for a year or two FIRST and then you can come back to the original rape-charge issue and we'll think about it.
I'm really surprised how many highly rated comments claim extradition from the UK would be easier. Extradition from Sweden to the US would almost certainly happen. Take for example this fact:
How could anyone reasonably expect him to willfully submit to that? It seems highly likely he would end up rotting in a US jail for life, unheard and unseen.
"It would be easier for the US to get him extradited from the UK than from Sweden." -- except he isn't in the UK. He's in Ecuador. And when Whitehall floated the idea that they could violate the integrity of the Ecuadorian embassy to arrested him, it blew up in their faces. Doing so would effectively open up their embassies to similar retaliation by every other country in the world.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
This doesn't get mentioned enough:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Of course, he spent YEARS in the UK while the Swedes' extradition request worked its way through the courts. If the USA wanted him, why didn't the USA try to extradite him from the UK during that time?
Face it, the evidence is that the USA has no real interest in Assange.
Obama has been willing to assassinate US citizens (twice, at least, and they're debating how to go about doing it again, I see in the news), so why wouldn't he just take out Assange the old-fashioned way if we cared about Assange at all?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I'm sure you know UK, but you don't know Sweden. The ruling party has close ties to the US. They've used Karl Rove as a consultant, and the foreign minister has admitted to passing on highly confidential information to the US embassy in the 70s - inter-party negotiation positions, stuff he wasn't even allowed to share with his own party.
They would pay a political price for just turning over Assange. But they would do it. They would need only the flimsiest of excuses. To be seen as US' puppets in their own country's eyes? No big deal to them, rubbing elbows with the US is worth it.
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UK is more powerful , and more nationalistic. The Conservatives may be just as deferential to the US in private as Sweden's ruling party, but they would pay a big price with their constituents if they acted like lapdogs in public.
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He's in the UK, in the Ecuadoran embassy. Embassies are not extraterritorial soil, but are protected under the Vienna Convention. Under the Convention, the UK can't enter without approval from Ecuador, which makes it similar in practical effect, but it's not the same as being on Ecuadorian soil.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Nor does Sweden. The suggestion that Sweden had such an agreement came from a misreading of their extradition treaty; the same term appears in the UK law and is about extraditing people temporarily after the extradition has been approved.
It seems that every time Assange comes up I have to paste this, so here goes. From the English High Court judgment, he is accused of 4 offences, as follows:
So what he is is alleged to have done (whether or not he did so) is definitely rape under both Swedish and English law.
If he is in Sweden, having been surrendered, then the UK's permission will be needed to extradite him further. That's in Article 28(4) of the Framework Decision on the European Arrest Warrant:
It doesn't matter if Sweden drops the charges or accusations, they couldn't extradite him to the US without permission from the UK.
On the Agiza and al-Zery issue, to me that is an argument against extraordinary rendition happening from Sweden; it was well over a decade ago, and caused such a huge scandal nationally and internationally, with changes to rules and laws, that it is unlikely to happen again, in an even higher profile situation, with a new government. Iirc there was likely to be a major investigation with legal action against the relevant Swedish officials, but that wasn't likely to go anywhere as the foreign minster at the time was murdered between the renditions and the scandal breaking.
Were Sweden to break the law and extra-judicially surrender Assange to the US, there would be a major international scandal, as they would be almost certainly breaking Swedish, EU and ECHR law, to help the US in what is probably already an unpopular situation. I don't think it would end well for the Swedish government - not least because they'd struggle to ever get an extradition or surrender warrant in similar circumstances ever again.
What those quote are saying is that if the Swedish courts say he can be extradited, the Government can say he can't be.
However, that decision still has to be made legally; i.e. in accordance with the law. So the Government couldn't (I hope) refuse an extradition because it was one of their ministers and they liked him. They would need a reasonable ground (or whatever their legal equivalent is - I don't know much about Swedish extradition procedures, but I do about English ones). While I disagree with this article's conclusions, it has some stuff pointing out how the Government would have specific grounds for refusing an extradition request... but to me it seems perfectly reasonable for them not to give hypothetical guarantees - particularly if those guarantees are enshrined in law anyway (such as not extraditing people for political crimes, or in cases of discrimination and persecution). If they get an extradition request, they can dismiss it immediately if it is manifestly unfounded under one of these grounds (or any other ground) but until they receive a request, they can't know if that's the case.
Sweden has the biggest military industrial complex in relation to population in the world
Israel and Switzerland have pretty big military industrial complexes as well. In Sweden's and Switzerland case its because of their policy of neutrality.
Sweden can't make any such promise because Extradition is a court matter and any politician bypassing the court in such a matter would be performing a major breach of the separation of powers.